RE: Principal Apologizes For Mock Auction of Black Students in Virginia

(12-04-2011 05:17 PM)BnW Wrote: This has nothing to do with interactive learning...

You got nothing, actually. When I want to call you a Racist, I'll say it using your name.

And you can dress up your issue as you like. You seem to think you have to convince someone their right to an opinion isn't right. That's a mistake.
I've been in classrooms where kids are taught the rote system of learning. Reading out of a book, off a computer screen. Hearing a teacher drone on and on and on.
Glassy eyes, bored expressions, tired faces, heads on desks sometimes napping, distractions like opening other browser windows during a lecture and entering chats just to get away.
And then I've seen, because I've taken the initiative, lights appear in dull eyes, real smiles break across faces. Fidgeting in chairs, not from boredom as that young mind thinks of some excuse to get out of the class since the 2nd request for a bathroom break in 20 minutes probably isn't going to get one a pass, but instead is from the anxious energy awaiting their turn to go next in the switch to a new method of teaching that those kids weren't expecting.
They come alive in those classrooms that engage their interest.
And if that's dressing it up in a way you simply don't approve, that's just too bad. When America is 14th, that's too far down the line not to see the old axiom come true. When you do what you've always done you'll get what you've always gotten. 14th! There's only up or down from there. And since the same old same has not allowed our country to rise to at least a spot in the top three, it's time to pay attention and learn something's not working!

PC be damned!

PC stymies creativity at an alter dedicated to pandering to the fear anyone somewhere may stand to be upset by everything. So mute and tone down freedom to speak, which implies self censorship in thought, and maybe no one anywhere will feel anything.

And hey Cetaceaphile, that's awesome. Though you do realize it was politically incorrect and stigmatized the blond students for life, right?
In Elementary school, our teacher divided our class into three groups and made it a contest to see which group of students could finish a collection of books by the end of the school year. We were each named for birds. Bluebirds, Robins, Starlings. Bluebirds were outstanding and just a book ahead of my group the Robins.
When it came time to learn about the Mayflower, as our school was constructed in a series of interlocking domes, the reading rooms in one class were octagonal shaped and mostly glass in the front, so it made for a very nice bit of solitude as a group and away from the noise of the other groups.
Our teacher on the Mayflower book day, had created our reading room to look just like we were inside a ship. Complete with little round cutouts for the portholes. That day, before the reading class, each girl and boy made a fitting pilgrim hat out of construction paper.
And then when we entered the "ship" we took our seats in a circle and we each got to read a paragraph from the book.
It was one of the best experiences in school that I can remember. Because all the classes were like that in Reading class. Interactive, fun, hands on. A year before I graduated Elementary, anxious to finally move to Junior High, I was sitting outside at recess reading my new paperback; 20 Thousand Leagues under the sea. The adult version of the book, not some kid style text.

By the end of first year of Junior High, the classes were so dull and the teachers so bored teaching upwards of 32 kids per period, that if my parents would have let me, I'd have dropped out.

Kids want to learn. But that won't happen unless they first want to pay attention.

RE: Principal Apologizes For Mock Auction of Black Students in Virginia

(12-04-2011 08:38 PM)GodVirusDeleted Wrote: So BnW.. if your not hypersensitive and offended about silly shit like this then you are racist?

I'm not sure what this even means so I'm not sure how to respond. Where did I say that you need to be offended by this?

Sorry, I don't follow the point you're making.

(12-04-2011 08:38 PM)GodVirusDeleted Wrote: I want to live in a world where words like race and racist aren't needed anymore. Then people can role play and it doesn't matter what skin or eye color you have. FFS how long does it take to kill the past!

Maybe I'm just an impatient bastard...

Sounds great but I'm also not following the relevance of this comment to the story at hand either.

GK

I understand your point about interactive learning. That is not at all what I questioned. What I challenged was the notion that to do this you need to make the point that slavery happened and why it was wrong by using black kids as props. The facts of history tell us that blacks were used as slave labor in the US and Europe for many centuries, with the slave movement ending in Europe in the early 19th century and ending in the US after the Civil War (I think it continued in parts of the Americas past that). The lesson, however, is a bit different. The lesson is about how we treat people and how easy it is to find random traits about people and use them as means to divide us and distinguish ourselves. I'm familiar with the blue eye/brown eye scenarios and have seen the videos of how it works out and that is, in my opinion at least, a much more intelligent way of teaching the lesson because you are showing the absurdity of discrimination as a concept instead of focusing on a specific group where the lesson from that can be that "hey, these people were different but they're still ok". And, if you think taking a group of kids and singling them out as different for a class experiment based on something concrete is not going to have an impact on their pysche, well, I guess we just spend our time around very different kids.

My point is that this is not a PC issue and arguing that any result we don't agree with is just PC in action without addressing the issue is just intellectually dishonest. When it comes to this particular issue and the lesson to be learned, I'd prefer to use the Sneeches with the stars upon thars then to start singling out kids based on their skin color. That's not because I'm concerned about political correctness either.

Shackle their minds when they're bent on the cross
When ignorance reigns, life is lost

RE: Principal Apologizes For Mock Auction of Black Students in Virginia

(15-04-2011 02:18 PM)BnW Wrote: GK

I understand your point about interactive learning.

I will admit I had to Google sneeches with the stars upon thars, so as to follow you. I don't think I do even then, because I learned the star bellied sneeches, (is she really going there? Yes, yes she's trying to.) , are the "In Crowd". While the starless belly one's are the shunned and mopey.

I'm not familiar with Seuss, so I'll trust that you know how that relates to the OP.

I guess the point I was trying to make is, the segregation that occurred in a "free" country wherein it was considered proper and justified to own a select group of people because they were seen as soulless animals and worthy of being property, is what communicates the history wherein slavery occurred as well as relating the schism in an American society that thought itself free, while owning people due to the color of their skin and the judgment that made them like unto animals and not entitled to be free and equal.

That that reenactment, regarding slavery in America, reiterates today the schism that still exists in racism, and all "isms", that segregate the American community into select classes of people wherein they are then deemed worthy, for populating those classes, of ridicule, lawful bias, discrimination and callous indifference to their plight.

A bit like, (OK, there she goes trying to tie in the Sneeches she's only just heard about), the In Crowd that believes it's tummy stars are medals of entitlement, to do as they wish. And starless bellies who are deemed unable to ever make the grade to stand toe to toe with those privileged to wear stars.

For kids to learn hate, divisiveness, discrimination, bigotry, callous indifference to the plight of others, isn't healthy in sustaining a free and liberated community in 2011, what better way to know what that means, through how it feels, to play act, temporarily step into the shoes and a frame of time, when that was the norm. When that was considered what it meant to be a wealthy American? Not just by the acres one owned, but by the number of slaves too.

We can tell kids till we're blue in the face, discrimination, racism, classism, hate, bigotry,terrorism, is wrong. Slavery is and was wrong. But why is it wrong? Because we say so? What's wrong with kids volunteering to find out why it's wrong? Because as they say, the personal is political. Acting out the political, getting that sense personally of what it could feel like if it had been real life. (Not that slavery is a thing of the past for any race) That's what leaves an impression. How does it feel? When one knows their voluntarily acting a part, getting inside the character they can leave when the class is through. After having learned of a history that lesson strives to teach is worth being left behind.

The thing is, it is also about political correctness. Had the children in this case been reversed in their roles, white kids playing the slaves and black kids playing the plantation owners, the "masters", the outrage would have been the same and yet different in that the umbrage would focus on humiliating white kids by making them slaves. And humiliating black kids by making them slave owners, plantation owners, "masters" over their white peers.

While reading about the real life real roles played in Civil War history is perfectly fine. Read, but don't touch. Read aloud and hear the words of history, at least in those text books that haven't been edited so as to appear politically correct in the 21st century, but don't feel.

Because what everyone's missing when they cry "Racism", and all other objections to this teaching method is, any kid there could have refused to participate. That would have been a lesson in itself. And if the teacher had not permitted that, again another lesson would be afforded.

Kid's have every right to know the history that built the country they enjoy now. And we don't have a right to say it has to smell like roses, because we're afraid the smell of the real life back then might offend the senses. Slavery should offend every sense we have. It's the only way history stands to teach us anything.

RE: Principal Apologizes For Mock Auction of Black Students in Virginia

(11-04-2011 07:07 PM)GassyKitten Wrote: Funny, I didn't think of public school children as representatives of a race of people forced to enter America in chains.

Rather, I thought these were black American children afforded a public school education who were there to learn about the history of a race of people who helped to build the America they enjoy now.
That to mimic what befell those slaves back in the day, so those children could fully comprehend the conflict of the time, the bite of slavery, the segregation of the races between those who were white and privileged and those who were dark and owned. So that feeling what that was like, as a play of sorts, would drive home the lesson about all of those events that transpired to make what is erroneously remembered as a "Civil" war!

And sure, aside from shaving the heads because parents could rightly object to that, teaching Jewish kids about the Holocaust pretending to "tattoo" numbers on their arms, and setting them in their chairs so as to be segregated while wearing yellow paper stars, while other peers wear pink triangles, crosses, and all those former insignias that relegated many people, not just Jews, to suffer the Holocaust, would also teach the lesson about that dark period in history. And it would lend an indelible impression one may assume, as to why it can never be let to happen again.

As would the slavery re-enactment. Because if the children are indeed our future, for that to be more than a slogan they should learn, really understand, what it means to never let some histories be repeated!

What better way than to let them feel how it felt, so they take it personally and get that message. America isn't number one in education, because it pays to dumb our children down. PC BS isn't going to change that. It's going to promote that. What insults American education systems is that at this point we appear to believe it's politically correct to raise dumb kids, who very often can't find their home country on a blank world map.
Who don't know who the 38th President was. Who can't do simple math on paper, because they've grown accustomed not to thinking, but to keying calculators, their smart phones, or laptops. Who can't spell, because "spell check" does it for them.

Yes indeed, PC does have it's place. As a learning tool for what to incorporate into a scholastic environment, if one wants to be politically correct and intellectually stunted.

America! The greatest nation in the world kids!
Hey, can you find this nation on a blank world map?
No? Well, that's OK, it's not nice to point anyway.

I agree with you. Though maybe they could have done it in a different way. They could have had kids pick papers at random and the ones who picked say blue papers acted as the slaves up for auctions and the ones who picked pink papers could be the prospective slave owners. I remember a similar lesson in school where they separated the brown eyed children from the blue eyed children and said that the ones with blue eyes were allowed to have some sort of privilege that the brown eyed children weren't. I can't remember what they were allowed to do but I certainly remember the lesson. It's actually not a new idea at all. And children are more likely to get the message of the and remember the historical details than they are if they're forced to simply sit through a lecture.

I conditions tranquil in reality noticed, tbh, it's right-minded a part of me. I estimate in theory, I assume trust to in alternative, but in study it didn't irritant me.

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